Wednesday, as police tried to get the situation under control, details of Lee were emerging. His MySpace page shows a 43-year-old who wanted to meet "environmentalists, scientists, readers of Daniel Quinn, and people who want to work toward a real change."

Civilization must be exposed for the filth it is. That, and all its disgusting religious-cultural
roots and greed. Broadcast this message until the pollution in the planet is reversed and the
human population goes down! This is your obligation. If you think it isn't, then get hell off the
planet! Breathe Oil! It is the moral obligation of everyone living otherwise what good are they??

Immigration: Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL immigration
pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that. Find solutions to stopping it. Call for people
in the world to develop solutions to stop it completely and permanently. Find solutions FOR
these countries so they stop sending their breeding populations to the US and the world to seek
jobs and therefore breed more unwanted pollution babies. FIND SOLUTIONS FOR THEM TO
STOP THEIR HUMAN GROWTH AND THE EXPORTATION OF THAT DISGUSTING FILTH!
(The first world is feeding the population growth of the Third World and those human families
are going to where the food is! They must stop procreating new humans looking for nonexistant
jobs!)

"First, some vocabulary. Let's have some names so we don't have to go on talking about 'the people of your culture' and 'the people of all other cultures.' I've used various names with various pupils, but I'm going to try a new pair with you. You're familiar with the expression 'Take it or leave it.' Using them in this sense, do the words takers and leavers have any heavy connotation for you?"

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"I mean, if I call one group Takers and the other group Leavers, will this sound like I'm setting up one to be good guys and the other to be bad guys?"

"No. They sound pretty neutral to me."

"Good. So henceforth I'm going to call the people of your culture Takers and the people of all other cultures Leavers."

The premise of the Taker story is the world belongs to man...The premise of the Leaver story is man belongs to the world.

You can't change these things with laws. You must change people's minds.

“The story the Leavers have been enacting for the past three million years isn’t a story of conquest and rule. Enacting it doesn’t give them power. Enacting it gives them lives that are satisfying and meaningful to them. This is what you’ll find if you go among them. They’re not seething with discontent and rebellion, not incessantly wrangling over what should be allowed and what forbidden, not forever accusing each other of not living the right way, not living in terror of each other not going crazy because their lives seem empty and pointless, not having to stupefy themselves with drugs to get through the days, not having a new religion every week to give them something to hold on to, not forever searching for something to do or something to believe in that will make lives worth living. And – I repeat – this is not because they live close to nature or have no formal government or because they’re innately noble. This is simply because they’re enacting a story that works well for people – a story that worked well for three million years and that still works well where the Takers haven’t yet managed to stamp it out.”

Ishmael thought for a moment, "Among the people of your culture, which want to destroy the world?"
"Which want to destroy it? As far as I know, no one specifically wants to destroy the world."
"And yet you do destroy it, each of you. Each of you contributes daily to the destruction of the world."
"Yes, that's so."
"Why don't you stop?"
I shrugged, "Frankly, we don't know how."
"You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live."
"Yes, that's the way it seems."

When reached in Houston on Wednesday afternoon, Quinn told TBD that he had never heard of Lee, and his wife could not recall any type of correspondence from him.

"Good God," Quinn said. "Well, I'm certainly surprised and distressed that he had somehow or other taken my book as a model for this kind of behavior."

When asked what he would tell Lee if he could talk to him, Quinn said: "I guess I would ask him what he thinks he's doing and what he thinks he's accomplishing and then go from there. What's in his mind is what's paramount right now. Sort of wish I could talk to him."

As you may know, Plait’s theme was one of civility. He argues that skeptics and atheists must be respectful and civil if they want to win others to their cause. But he finds that politeness on the wane. “In some specific places,” he claims, “the tone of what we’re doing is decaying, and instead of relying on the merits of the arguments, which is what critical thinking is really all about, what evidence based reasoning is all about— it seems that vitriol and venom are on the rise.”

When you’re dealing with someone who disagrees with you on some matter, what is your goal? What is your goal? What are you trying to accomplish? Insulting them, yelling at them, calling them brain damaged or morons or baby rapers, may make you feel good. . . but is your goal to score a cheap point, or is your goal to win the damn game?

What struck me most strongly about the DBAD talk, and reminded me of the Tom Johnson affair, was Plait’s complete failure to provide evidence for what he was saying. Not only did he not give a single instance of the rudeness and stridency that he finds so ubiquitous, but also gave no evidence that skeptics who behave that way have been less effective than others. This was curious because, after all, the prime requirement for good skepticism is that you give evidence for what you think, and demand it from others.

First, Plait’s opening question was ludicrously loaded, biased to produce the answer that would gladden his accommodationist heart. “How many of you changed your mind because a skeptic screamed in your face . . . and called you an idiot and a retard?” Well, obviously, if you put it like that there is only one possible answer. But suppose he had said, “How many of you changed your mind because you saw your beliefs being devastatingly mocked, ridiculed, surgically taken apart with razor-sharp wit . . . ?”

Similarly, when I employ ridicule against the arguments of a young earth creationist, I am almost never trying to convert the YEC himself. That is probably a waste of time. I am trying to influence all the third parties listening in, or reading my books. I am amazed at Plait’s naivety in overlooking that and treating it as obvious that our goal is to convert the target of our ridicule. Ridicule may indeed annoy the target and cause him to dig his toes in. But our goal might very well be (in my case usually is) to influence third parties, sitting on the fence, or just not very well-informed about the issues. And to achieve that goal, ridicule can be very effective indeed.

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.
...

This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle's underside.

The least surprising but most disappointing thing about the tea party rally I attended yesterday on the campus of Wake Forest University was that it was hosted by the campus GOP. I keep hearing that the tea partiers are "independent" and not connected to any particular political party, so it was interesting that for the 1.5 hours I was there, the speakers (who did not stop speaking to allow "the people" to talk) were all either campus GOP, local GOP, or endorsing GOP candidates. It was sponsored by Civitas, an NC limited government (read: republican) organization and the John Locke Foundation. In other words, like all other tea party rallies, there is no grassroots organization here. It's all top-down, run by conservative groups with a lot of money. "Community organizers," if you will.

It seems to me that this indicates a change in the tea party movement. The GOP is either scared that the tea party might break off and somehow take down the official party, or they're trying to reign these people in because they make republicans look bad. Either way, it was clear at this rally that even in a smaller city like Winston-Salem, the upper-levels of the republican party have decided to take an active hand in corralling these things. Literally. There was a yellow rope around the entire proceedings.

Reports indicate that the Tea Party Movement benefits from millions of dollars from conservative foundations that are derived from wealthy U.S. families and their business interests. Is appears that money to organize and implement the Movement is flowing primarily through two conservative groups: Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks.

In an April 9, 2009 article on ThinkProgress.org, Lee Fang reports that the principal organizers of Tea Party events are Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works, two "lobbyist-run think tanks" that are "well funded" and that provide the logistics and organizing for the Tea Party movement from coast to coast. Media Matters reported that David Koch of Koch Industries was a co-founder of Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), the predecessor of FreedomWorks. David Koch was chairman of the board of directors of CSE. CSE received substantial funding from David Koch of Koch Industries, which is the largest privately-held energy company in the country, and the conservative Koch Family Foundations, which make substantial annual donations to conservative think tanks, advocacy groups, etc. Media Matters reported that the Koch family has given more than $12 million to CSE (predecessor of FreedomWorks) between 1985 and 2002

Look behind the curtain on the controversy and you'll find habitual violator Jack DeCoster, whose rap sheet of violations of state and federal laws regarding food safety, human rights, labor rights, the environment and animal cruelty is a mile long.

The voluntary recall was announced by Hillandale Farms. The company is located about 100 miles from the Wright County Eggs, based in Galt, Iowa, which has previously ordered a recall of 380 million eggs in one of the largest egg recalls in history.

"There have been laboratory-confirmed salmonella enteritidis illnesses associated with the shell eggs," Hillandale Farms noted in a press release. "[T]he investigation is ongoing."

After the Dems dispensed with and inane Republican effort to get two months paid vacation at the end of the year, and approved $600 million for a border "security" bill that does nothing to address comprehensive immigration reform in any way, and which the Republicans will continue to bitch about anyway, they got down to the actual business of the day: passing the $26.1 billion to help keep the states afloat for the remainder of the year.

With the time running out, the vote count stood at 247-161.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- A bill that would send $640 million to North Carolina state government and local schools schools has been signed into law by President Obama.

The U.S. House approved Tuesday a $26 billion bill pushed by Democrats that mostly would pay for extra Medicaid expenses and school districts to preserve teacher positions. Obama signed it later in the day.

State officials say North Carolina's $343 million Medicaid share means state government won't have to take an extra 1 percent cut and withhold pension contributions to narrow a budget gap.

The Department of Public Instruction says nearly $300 million in grants equal about 4,800 teaching positions. Bill McNeal with the North Carolina Association of School Administrators says local districts will be pleased to receive additional money after cutting expenses before the new school yea

Over the past day, Twitter has been abuzz with tweets¹ on the Conservapedia page on “Counterexamples to relativity“, provides a list of 24 “points” that attempt to show the weakness of Einstein’s crazy ideas!

In my mind, perhaps the most despicable sort of denialism or crankery, however, is that which is based on some sort of political or religious ideology. This is clearly what is going on here, and the author relies on a familiar form of rhetorical trickery known as the “Gish Gallop“: throw as many claims out there as possible, regardless of their validity, with the realization that most people will be swayed by the amount of “evidence”, and not look too closely at the details.

Looking at the “evidence”, it is clear that there isn’t a single point made that isn’t misleading, incoherent, or simply dishonest. A person reading the Conservapedia post will be measurably more ignorant afterwards, and I get the distinct impression that this is what the author intended.

Einstein’s theory of relativity built upon Newton’s earlier theory of relativity — Newton’s theory was not shown to be wrong, but rather incomplete. Assuming that a new piece of evidence somehow invalidates a century of observations shows a complete lack of understanding of science and how it works.

For instance, the Tea Party, the grassroots movement committed to reining in what they perceive as big government, and fiscal irresponsibility, also appear predisposed to intolerance. Approximately 45% of Whites either strongly or somewhat approve of the movement. Of those, only 35% believe Blacks to be hardworking, only 45 % believe Blacks are intelligent, and only 41% think that Blacks are trustworthy. Perceptions of Latinos aren’t much different. While 54% of White Tea Party supporters believe Latinos to be hardworking, only 44% think them intelligent, and even fewer, 42% of Tea Party supporters believe Latinos to be trustworthy. When it comes to gays and lesbians, White Tea Party supporters also hold negative attitudes. Only 36% think gay and lesbian couples should be allowed to adopt children, and just 17% are in favor of same-sex marriage.

We oppose the legalization of sodomy. We demand that Congress exercise its authority granted by the U.S. Constitution to withhold jurisdiction from the federal courts from cases involving sodomy.

We also urge the Texas Legislature and the United States Congress to enact legislation prohibiting any jurisdiction from allowing any substitute or parallel system of Law, specifically, but not limited to, Sharia Law, to be recognized which is not in accordance with the Constitutions of Texas or of the United States of America.

As scientists would predict in a hotter world, some of the indicators—such as ocean heat content and temperature over land—are increasing. Others, such as sea ice cover and snow cover, are decreasing.

The influx of greenhouses gases into the atmosphere has also hit oceans particularly hard, the NOAA report says. (See an interactive on the greenhouse effect and global warming.)

New evidence suggests that more than 90 percent of that heat trapped by greenhouses gases over the past 50 years has been absorbed into the oceans.

Because water expands as it warms, the added ocean heat is contributing to sea level rise as well as to the rapid melting of Arctic summer sea ice. That melting in 2010 is on track to be worse than 2007, when Arctic ice cover reached its lowest point on record.

Such climatic shifts are already ushering in extreme weather, which plagued much of the globe in 2009, according to the report. (See a world map of potential global warming impacts.) For instance, Australia experienced its third hottest year on record.

On one February 2009 day—labeled "Black Saturday"—in Australia, 400 wildfires swept across the state of Victoria, killing 173 people and destroying 3,500 buildings. (See pictures of the Australian fires.)

Overall, I'd never suggest posting information on a website that you don't want anyone and everyone to be able to see, regardless of what kind of promises you get. Even if Facebook's privacy was perfect, someone could still hack your account or look over your or a friend's shoulder in a public place, or someone could hack your friends' accounts and see your info that way. I guess what I'm wondering is this: how much privacy is it reasonable to expect on a site like Facebook?

"I saw that you checked in there on Foursquare," said the stranger calling the restaurant where Shea Sylvia was dining. He suggested they "hang out," adding, "You probably shouldn't be telling people where you are on Foursquare, should you?"

Sylvia lives in Kansas City and works in online marketing. Her story, first chronicled on her personal blog and reprinted in The Guardian, is creepy on unending levels. There is the fact that he chose to call the restaurant and ask the manager to find her, based on a description culled from her profile photo. There is the threatening, teach-you-a-lesson tone, shortly after she declined to be overjoyed at his advances. And somehow, the simple act of jumping platforms — hasn't he ever heard of tweeting at someone? — into the physical space, at an unguarded moment, is creepiest of all.

This web site serves as an introduction and portal to four faithful ministries which are teaching that WE CAN KNOW from the Bible alone that the date of the rapture of believers will take place on May 21, 2011 and that God will destroy this world on October 21, 2011. Please take your time and browse through the teachings of Harold Camping, President of Family Radio. Visit EBible Fellowship, Bible Ministries International, and The-Latter-Rain to read and listen to many faithful teachers give scriptural insight on the doctrines that God is teaching His people. Learn about the Biblical Timeline of History, the correct method of Bible interpretation, the End of the Church Age and God's command to believers that they must depart out of the churches. Study the proofs that God has so graciously given in His Word showing us that these dates are 100% accurate and beyond dispute. Above all, please READ THE BIBLE and prayerfully ask God to open your spiritual eyes to these truths. May it please Him to have mercy on each of our souls.

Assistant Senate Democratic Leader Dick Durbin pointedly noted that many Republicans had earlier favored more disclosure.

But this year, Durbin said, "They're betting that most of these ads are going to be on behalf of their candidates and against Democrats. That's what it comes down to."

Are there aliens out there who might kidnap humans and put them through all manner of nefarious exercises?

I'm thinking no. And for two reasons: The odds of there being intelligent aliens somewhere in the galaxy, space-faring aliens, are incredibly low, and even if they do exist they'd be so far away that getting here would be a serious problem. Enough that the trip wouldn't be worth it.

When we finally travel to other stars and find Earth-like planets, the chances are pretty good that most of them will have simple life on them. No dinosaur-filled jungles, no proto-Vulcans, nothing like that whatever. It'll be a rare planet indeed that even has something resembling animals, and rarer one yet with anything near our technological level.

Now, you might suppose there's a planet orbiting some star that's older than Earth. After all, the galaxy has been around for 10 to 12 billion years! Maybe an Earth-like planet formed a million years before ours did, fostering an alien civilization that's now in advance of where we are.

Last month was the hottest June ever recorded worldwide and the fourth consecutive month that the combined global land and sea temperature records have been broken, according to the US government's climate data centre.

The figures released last night by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) suggest that 2010 is now on course to be the warmest year since records began in 1880.